Asheville School marks 50 years of racial integration

The Asheville School, in Asheville, North Carolina, marked the occasion of 50 years of racial integration at the school in September, as Oliver G Prince Jr, one of the first three African Americans to enroll at the school in 1967, came back to talk to students.

An integrated classroom in Anacostia High School, Washington, DC, in 1957 (public domain)

He talked with Allie Dent, a reporter for The Ashnoca, the student newspaper at the school, saying, “My Asheville School experience developed my critical thinking skills and instilled a lifelong love of learning.”

The most important lesson he learned at the Asheville School?

After I left school, it was hard for me to find a way to “fit in” with the world around me. … Even when you are low, when things feel they are at their worst, when life knocks you down … you have the power to prevail. Dig deep, get up, dust yourself off, and make a difference.

Today, women are experiencing many of the same struggles fitting in—or, rather, being treated equally in the workforce—as African-American students did during the Civil Rights Movement. Across the state of North Carolina, Logan Powers wrote about the #MeToo movement in describing Oprah Winfrey’s acceptance speech at the Golden Globe Award ceremony last week.

“Whether or not she chooses to run for president, the speech she gave was monumental to say the least,” Logan wrote in Cat Talk, the student newspaper at Millbrook High School in Raleigh.

Ms Winfrey became the first African-American woman to be awarded the Cecil B DeMille Award and said that change is not only on the horizon but imminent.